Dale Jennings is preparing to take his driving test next week. Passing would not only allow him to reserve a space in the players’ car park at Oakwell, but also silence the teasing from certain Barnsley team-mates.

At 21, Jennings is quite old – at least for a footballer – to be without a licence but he has a good excuse. So good, indeed, that the jokey banter is underscored by a certain envy.

These days the left-winger is an integral part of Danny Wilson’s attempt to win Barnsley an immediate return to the Championship. Rewind three years, though, and he was the 18-year-old Tranmere prodigy transplanted to Bavaria after being signed by Bayern Munich on the recommendation of their north-west-based former player, Dietmar Hamann.

Suddenly hyped as “the new Franck Ribéry”, Jennings found himself training alongside the original – learning an awful lot in the process. Quite apart from the trickiness inherent in switching from driving on the left-hand side of the road to the right, there was simply no time to continue the driving lessons he had begun on Merseyside.

Knee problems – most notably patellar tendinitis, also known as jumper’s knee – ultimately dictated that he would vacate his Munich apartment two years later without having made a first-team appearance, but Jennings is immensely grateful for what he terms an “amazing, life-changing” experience.

“It was a great opportunity, I wouldn’t change anything for the world,” he says. “It matured me, made me more disciplined. Germans are different, they’re more disciplined than English footballers, especially in the way they play the game, and they’re better technically. Training with Bayern there was a lot more passing than I’d been used to, it was a different style. I learned a lot – it’s made me a better team player.”

While some Bayern names were a little dismissive towards the tongue-tied young man from Prenton Park, others could not have been more generous. “Philipp Lahm is a great player and a great person,” Jennings says, emphasising that Germany’s World Cup-winning captain and right-back remains a particular role model. “He was really nice to me; going into that changing room, he made me feel very welcome.”

Jennings’s progress with Bayern’s reserve side was regularly interrupted by injuries. His attendance at German lessons was regular but intelligent and willing as he clearly is, it gradually became clear that languages are not his forte. At one point he was trying so hard to overcome the communication barrier that Bayern’s coaches felt his game was being adversely affected.

“I can speak some German,” Jennings says. “But in the end they told me to use English in training so I could focus on the football better.”

When, after two years, he had still not broken into the senior team and his girlfriend became pregnant with their first child, Jennings made a brave decision and requested a transfer back to England. “I needed to be playing regularly,” he says.

A £250,000 switch from Bayern to Barnsley could easily have prompted an outbreak of reverse culture shock but he adapted without fuss. “Being here just feels normal,” he says. “I’m enjoying it.”

Which is not to say he has lost his ambition. Inspired by the countless hours of extra crossing and finishing practice undertaken daily by Ribéry and Arjen Robben after training, Jennings has developed a fierce work ethic he trusts will eventually propel him on to the Premier League stage.

Unfortunately such diligence failed to impress Barnsley’s former manager David Flitcroft and the player found himself sidelined last autumn before being loaned to MK Dons. Jennings’s career seemed on an inexorably downward trajectory until Karl Robinson, now MK Dons’s manager but previously his schoolboy coach at Liverpool’s academy, helped arrest the slide.

“Playing for Karl at MK Dons was very good for me, he understands how players think and he likes good passing,” says a deceptively resilient character who went from teenage rejection by Liverpool to winning the Football League’s apprentice of the year at Tranmere. “Karl wanted my loan extended but Danny [Wilson] wasn’t having any of it.”

Wilson returned to a struggling Barnsley last December and quickly rescued the exile from Flitcroft’s deep freeze. Instructing him to “express yourself” the manager – who in 1997 had led the team into the Premier Leagueas Oakwell chorused “It’s just like watching Brazil” – encouraged Jennings not to be shy about taking defenders on or attempting audacious shots.

“Danny works one-to-one with me on quite a lot of stuff,” he says. “We talk a lot, it’s good. He wants to build a passing side. I’m enjoying my football and hopefully we’ll get promoted.”

Happily, the patellar tendinitis which had became so pronounced that Bayern checked him into Austria’s leading sports injuries clinic, is under control. “I have to spend quite a lot of time with the physio though,” he adds. “We’re working on strengthening the knee.”

Jennings is not only healthier but happier since swapping Bayern for Barnsley. “I live in the town, not too far from the ground,” he says. “It’s a great place; I like it here.